Lightweight armor for ballistic protection applications, and more specifically lightweight personal armor is used to stop high and very high ballistic threats e.g. armor piercing (AP) bullets. For efficient low weight ballistic protection against high power penetration projectile, hard armor such as hard ceramic armor in form of ceramic plates or other special shapes is needed. Ceramic armor is typically used for personal protection, vehicles protection, ships, helicopters, and aircraft protection. For personal protection, body armor including ceramic plate backed by composite material is often used. A hard armor composite includes a rigid ceramic front surface and a laminated ballistic composite material/fabric. The composite material and any fabric (e.g., from a vest) behind the ceramic plate serves to absorb the remaining energy of the bullet after hitting the ceramic facing and to “catch” the bullet, it's fragments and any ceramic fragments.
In current body armor designs, improved anti-ballistic performance is generally achieved at the expense of using thicker and therefore heavier ceramic and backface materials, reducing the mobility of the wearer. When thinner materials are used, back face deflection (also known as back face deformation or BFD) of the armor increases and may cause blunt force trauma to the user. Likewise, thinner materials have reduced abilities to withstand multi-impact attacks. Although increasingly sophisticated materials have been developed to increase anti-ballistic performance without added weight, more protective, lighter and less expensive solutions would be useful.